They say the only guarantees in life are death and taxes.
But what if the former wasn’t a problem anymore…and you still lost someone.
This is where things start for Amber, the twenty-something history professor at the center of Mattie Bukowski’s new science fiction space opera novel Up The Entropic Hill (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Bukowski discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as his famous namesake.
To start, what is Up The Entropic Hill about, and when and where is it set?
Up The Entropic Hill is about Amber, a twenty-something professor of history who lives in a sheltered paradise of a world and yearns to leave it. On Amber’s planet, Alexandria, technology has progressed to the point where even death is not the end for its citizens — that is, except for Amber’s parents, who died in a freak accident when she was a child and couldn’t be uploaded to the digital afterlife like everyone else. Understandably, this made Amber quite cynical and misanthropic. Her life changes when she is given the opportunity to investigate a mysterious artefact, the only remaining trace of a civilization that disappeared thousands of years ago.
Most of the novel is set on a hitchhiking quest across the galaxy in the very distant future.
Where did you get the idea for Up The Entropic Hill?
The novel has many inspirations, mostly in books and other media, but the first spark of an idea for it I got while listening to a biophysics lecture in my third year of undergrad. It was a lecture about entropy and how it relates to information, to life, and the universe in general. Somehow, it put me into a quite existential mood, and I came out of that lecture hall with a lot of sci-fi ideas.
I can’t really talk about how the idea of entropy and information manifested itself in the book since it would spoil the ending. You would need to get to the final chapter to see it for yourself.
You said Up The Entropic Hill is set “in the very distant future.” How distant are we talking about, and why that far from now as opposed to a lot closer or even further away?
It’s unimaginably distant; think millions if not billions of years. Enough for humans to have evolved into multiple different species, some of which barely resemble the present versions of us.
I wanted it set that far away to explore technology that we couldn’t dream about having on a closer timescale (say, a few hundred years or even a thousand years) and to have a world completely detached from our current environment and culture. In Up The Entropic Hill, there’s barely a mention of our solar system, and most of the galaxy is populated with non-humans. In fact, humans are a rare species preserved by aliens, in a kind of cosmic zoo.
It sounds like Up The Entropic Hill is a science fiction story, though it sounds like it might also be space opera or hard sci-fi or even hard sci-fi space opera….
I wouldn’t say the novel is hard sci-fi. It actually leans into almost fantasy-like elements in some places. It is definitely a space opera, though not the kind of space opera that involves cosmic battles and politics. It’s a space opera the way Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is one: because it is a space adventure that takes place in a big galaxy populated with all kinds of alien races.
Up The Entropic Hill is your first novel, though I’m guessing it’s not the first thing you’ve written. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Hill, but not on anything else you’ve written?
Up The Entropic Hill is actually the second novel I’ve ever finished. The first is not published, and I doubt it ever will be, without a major re-write.
In terms of literary influences, for sure the books of Douglas Adams were a huge inspiration, as well as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
Also, a book influence that isn’t fiction: Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Like the biophysics lectures, it inspired some of the novel’s science and mythology that I can’t really talk about because it would spoil the ending.
I was also inspired by existentialist and absurdist philosophy, for example by “The myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus. Up The Entropic Hill has a lot of philosophy and mythology in it, so the philosophical influences are quite important for the novel.
What about your literary namesake, Charlies Bukowski? He didn’t write sci-fi, but you could’ve given Amber a drinking problem or something.
He is my namesake by coincidence. Bukowski is actually my great-grandmother’s surname, and I always loved how it sounded, so that’s what I picked for my author name.
I do enjoy Bukowski’s poetry but I don’t think he was an influence in any way on the novel.
And then, what about non-literary influences; was Up The Entropic Hill influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
I can name two probably surprising influences on the character of the protagonist, Amber: Gregory House from House MD and Lilo from Lilo & Stitch. I think those two examples give a good idea of what kind of person Amber is.
Some Black Mirror episodes were an inspiration for the world of Alexandria, Amber’s home planet.
Lastly, the video game Night In The Woods had some influence on the tone and mood of the novel, especially during my first big edit of it.
Now, sci-fi novels like Up The Entropic Hill can be stand-alone stories or part of larger sagas. What is Hill?
Up The Entropic Hill is a stand-alone novel, and it was always planned to be. Originally, it actually had an open ending that I later decided didn’t fit the tone and message of the book. So now it ends quite conclusively. I can’t imagine coming back to it for a sequel.
I asked earlier if Up The Entropic Hill was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Hill could work as a movie, a show, or a game?
To daydream about it for a second, I think Up The Entropic Hill would make a good animated series. I don’t think it would fit into a movie (at least not one of normal length), and I doubt it would look good in live action, considering how bizarre some of the aliens and worlds in it look. My dream for a TV adaptation would be a traditional, 2D animated series, maybe anime-inspired, similar to the style of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Alternatively, perhaps it could work as a computer game…an animated visual novel, for example.
So, if someone wanted to adapt it into an animated show, who would you want them to cast as the voices of Amber and the other main characters?
I don’t have a specific actor in mind, but if anyone were to make that animated series, I would have one request: The protagonist, Amber, is autistic, and I would really love for her to be portrayed by an actually autistic person. Autistic adults like myself are tremendously underrepresented in media, and when we are, it is usually by allistic (not autistic) actors based off of scripts written by allistic writers. These portrayals are often inaccurate and sometimes even offensive. I can count on fingers of one hand the autistic characters I’ve seen in various media that are well-written representations of autism. I don’t know of any autistic women voice actors (or many autistic actors in general, to be honest) but I’m sure if such a casting appeared, dozens of people would apply.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about Up The Entropic Hill?
I would like people to know that if they feel lost in life, if they feel like there’s no point in anything, or that they are trapped by their circumstances and see no way out, this is a book for them. Between the lines of a hitchhiking space adventure, this novel is about finding peace and happiness in life by rejecting universal meaning and embracing the absurdity of the universe. So to anyone who struggles with purpose and meaning and living in a cosmically absurd and often unfair world — I see you. I struggle with it too, and I hope you will feel seen reading the novel.
Finally, if someone enjoys Up The Entropic Hill, what sci-fi space opera novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they read next ?
I’m going to recommend two books, one that was my favorite read of 2023, and one that has been on my TBR list for a while now.
The first is the novel Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. It is a bizarre, charming, dazzling story about a musical competition between various alien races, and it is full of love for humanity and hope. It is funny, deep, and beautifully written, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
The second is The Left Hand Of Dog by Si Clarke, which is described as a queer cozy mystery in space. Based off of the plot summary, it sounds like exactly something that I’d love and I can’t wait to read it.
